90% of the complaints about Resto will link to Raidbots HPS measures and say "OMG we're like 20% behind everyone, we're broken". The point GC was making is that HPS is a really, really terrible measure of healer value.

That doesn't mean there's no problem and Resto is fine, but you need to look beyond the HPS numbers. They're a part of the equation, but using those numbers without considering the other factors is not just fallacious, it's misleading. In particular, Resto Shaman are a very responsive healer. We have a lot of "smart" healing that automatically targets those who need it most, and our Mastery is similarly ideally suited to snatching people back up from the brink of death. Some healers blanket heals on everyone, Shaman generally do less healing, but it's better targeted healing.

If you want to see healing in comparative terms to DPS, you need to turn things around. You need to see 10/25 adds, all with moderately high health pools, and they're getting constant uneven heals. Being able to throw down a lot of broad-spectrum AoE on everything is useful, but arguably not as useful as being able to burst a single add that gets dangerously low, to kill it early. Think of a fight like the Faction Champions in ToC; you generally didn't try and beat that by AoEing them all down, you beat it by bursting one down and killing them, and going in order. Pushing your personal DPS higher by spamming AoEs on them doesn't necessarily help beat the event, if that AoE is getting healed back.

Healing works the same way, to a large extent. Spamming big HPS AoE heals is useful; it provides a buffer against death, but it doesn't react to circumstances. Shaman healing does that targeting. It's not about providing the most brute-force healing, it's about providing the most critical healing.

That's something that simply doesn't show up on metrics you can pull from a log parse. It's a lot more complicated.

None of this means "Resto is fine, L2P". Resto may indeed be lagging behind. But you can't use the HPS results as the sole proof of that. That's the point.

Ant then you do some research and realize that our output is comparable to other healers only when targets are low, so the "critical" healing can do anyone just fine AND the reason why people are low in the first place is because you got shaman instead of any other healer, then you dont face nearly as much situations with peoples life hanging in balance.

Of course there is the fact, that we have absolutely inefficient tools for some situations where this critical healing would be needed.

Ant then you do some research and realize that our output is comparable to other healers only when targets are low, so the "critical" healing can do anyone just fine AND the reason why people are low in the first place is because you got shaman instead of any other healer, then you dont face nearly as much situations with peoples life hanging in balance.

Of course there is the fact, that we have absolutely inefficient tools for some situations where this critical healing would be needed.

If people aren't getting low enough to need critical healing regularly, then you're running with too many healers, and that is why your Resto Shaman seems poor. Particularly in MoP, when hybrid DPS typically have strong healing cooldowns available, you should be trying to get by with as few healers as possible. The goal should be to have enough healing to keep everyone from dying during the regular damage, and enough burst healing with hybrid assistance for big damage phases. The goal of healing isn't to keep everyone as close to 100% as you can. It's to prevent anyone from reaching 0%. If nobody reaches 0%, the healers handled the encounter just fine.

Yes, people will get lower with a Shaman healer than they would otherwise, because Shaman don't heal the same way. It's like how people's health levels tend to stay higher with a Disc priest healer, since they have a heavier focus on shields that prevent damage, rather than healing back damage that's been taken. Resto Shaman is something like the opposite of that. It isn't a "problem", since you're trying to argue that average health levels are how you measure healer value, and that is simply not true. There is one factor that determines healer value. Whether or not people die. If Resto Shaman let people dip lower and then yank them back up with Mastery-powered heals, that isn't any "worse" than a Disc Priest shielding the damage in the first place, because the end result is the same; the player didn't die.

This is why triage healers are a valid and useful role, particularly in 25-man. And that's what Resto Shaman are. They may not provide the same blanket healing, but when things go tits-up, they have some of the best tools in the game for handling it.

I don't see why any raid wouldn't want a resto shaman in their roster. I can't imagine a 25 man raid without HTT, Mana Tide and Spirit Link. Not to forget Stormlash + Reincarnation + BL.. Resto shamans bring a lot of utility and thanks to their mastery are really good progression healers. They are also arguably the best tank healers. Sure a holy paladin can do more healing on two tanks thanks to beacon, but when it comes to healing a single tank shamans are really good if not the best.

To be honest I wasn't really enjoying getting destroyed by the shamans healing rain and healing rain alone whenever the raid was stacked and I am still seeing a lot of good resto shamans destroying everyone HPS wise when the raid is stacked.(Though I must admit I feel really comfortable when the raid is stacked, because I know that our resto shaman can almost keep the entire raid up by himself and he has the biggest cooldowns in the universe if there is any danger.)

Spread out aoe damage situations can be a nightmare for a resto shaman and thats when it feels like resto shamans can do nothing but use their cooldowns. They need some buffs there, but not too much because imo that would be a little unfair to mistweavers and druids and cause raids to stack resto shamans.
(To be clear : utility wise, a resto druid can do nothing a balance druid can't and mistweavers have close to no utility.)

Edit: Considering there is not a lot of stacking or even Healing Raining the melee in a 10man environment I can see why resto shamans feel broken. But still, they shouldn't be competitive with resto druids and mistweavers on spread out healing.

We are talking about present, not the future and not the past, just the PRESENT. The present is tier 15 so stop talking about healing rain since is not used (or at least not with all its power) in nearly all of the encounters. Even in that ones were it can be used we are still far behind from the other healers (megaera is a nice example).

IMO post like yours are completely stupid, since it is fucking clear resto shaman is BROKEN, so dont come here with all the advantages they bring. At the moment we are completely useless, maybe the most pathetic situation that a healer have lived.

Everyone linking millions of logs with alarming numbers and there is always some1 that needs to read them as he wants to.

If people aren't getting low enough to need critical healing regularly, then you're running with too many healers, and that is why your Resto Shaman seems poor. Particularly in MoP, when hybrid DPS typically have strong healing cooldowns available, you should be trying to get by with as few healers as possible. The goal should be to have enough healing to keep everyone from dying during the regular damage, and enough burst healing with hybrid assistance for big damage phases. The goal of healing isn't to keep everyone as close to 100% as you can. It's to prevent anyone from reaching 0%. If nobody reaches 0%, the healers handled the encounter just fine.

Yes, people will get lower with a Shaman healer than they would otherwise, because Shaman don't heal the same way. It's like how people's health levels tend to stay higher with a Disc priest healer, since they have a heavier focus on shields that prevent damage, rather than healing back damage that's been taken. Resto Shaman is something like the opposite of that. It isn't a "problem", since you're trying to argue that average health levels are how you measure healer value, and that is simply not true. There is one factor that determines healer value. Whether or not people die. If Resto Shaman let people dip lower and then yank them back up with Mastery-powered heals, that isn't any "worse" than a Disc Priest shielding the damage in the first place, because the end result is the same; the player didn't die.

This is why triage healers are a valid and useful role, particularly in 25-man. And that's what Resto Shaman are. They may not provide the same blanket healing, but when things go tits-up, they have some of the best tools in the game for handling it.

thats where you are wrong. heroics dont really have any true "triage healing" and we dont have some uber tools compared to other healers, they have their cool stuff too AND which is strong enough regardless of raid HPs. the simple thing is, shaman is far inferior to other healers until certain HP and then is about equal, not surpassing them really.

We are talking about present, not the future and not the past, just the PRESENT. The present is tier 15 so stop talking about healing rain since is not used (or at least not with all its power) in nearly all of the encounters. Even in that ones were it can be used we are still far behind from the other healers (megaera is a nice example).

IMO post like yours are completely stupid, since it is fucking clear resto shaman is BROKEN, so dont come here with all the advantages they bring. At the moment we are completely useless, maybe the most pathetic situation that a healer have lived.

Everyone linking millions of logs with alarming numbers and there is always some1 that needs to read them as he wants to.

I wudnt say useless. So far 2/12 heroics with 2 resto shamans in both fights. Tortos will have 1 unless they bring in 2 since our pally will be late ( btw the shaman is 2-3 in healing that encounter)

thats where you are wrong. heroics dont really have any true "triage healing"

Anyone dropping to dangerously low levels of health at any point, and needing swift healing to avoid death, is "triage healing". It's the concept of keeping people from hitting 0%, rather than trying to keep them at 100%.

and we dont have some uber tools compared to other healers, they have their cool stuff too AND which is strong enough regardless of raid HPs. the simple thing is, shaman is far inferior to other healers until certain HP and then is about equal, not surpassing them really.

And the issue is that, by your own argument here, we're about equal with other healers when push comes to shove. You're arguing that Shaman is borked because our performance isn't as good when there's no real pressure on healers. That's when you don't need performance. Because there's no pressure.

Focusing on the healing done during low-healing low-pressure portions of the boss fight makes as much sense as analyzing DPS specs based on trash AoE.

Anyone dropping to dangerously low levels of health at any point, and needing swift healing to avoid death, is "triage healing". It's the concept of keeping people from hitting 0%, rather than trying to keep them at 100%.

And the issue is that, by your own argument here, we're about equal with other healers when push comes to shove. You're arguing that Shaman is borked because our performance isn't as good when there's no real pressure on healers. That's when you don't need performance. Because there's no pressure.

Focusing on the healing done during low-healing low-pressure portions of the boss fight makes as much sense as analyzing DPS specs based on trash AoE.

no, keeping raid topped is part of heroic progression, there is no "uh, okay, hes at 80%, no need to waste heals just yet"
besides, problem with having shaman in the first palce is that your raid drops lower, with other healers, you can be at highler levels of HP all the time, which is crucial in HMs where there there is going aoe damage everywhere. Why bring a healer, which will just make your healing more spiky, thus more dangerous for gibs and less potent overall? because MTT is good manabattery for the rest.

If people aren't getting low enough to need critical healing regularly, then you're running with too many healers, and that is why your Resto Shaman seems poor.

That hasn't been the case this expansion at all, the last few tiers about half the bosses have had raidwide mechanics where if people aren't topped off or a serious defensive cd is used those players will die. And shamans are terrible at getting a bunch of people at 70% to full to avoid these mechanics.

no, keeping raid topped is part of heroic progression, there is no "uh, okay, hes at 80%, no need to waste heals just yet"

That's just a circular argument, not an actual point. The only thing that matters with healing is preventing anyone from dying. Some healers do that by pushing higher HPS in blanket healing. Some don't.

---------- Post added 2013-03-24 at 01:30 PM ----------

Originally Posted by gwenners

That hasn't been the case this expansion at all, the last few tiers about half the bosses have had raidwide mechanics where if people aren't topped off or a serious defensive cd is used those players will die. And shamans are terrible at getting a bunch of people at 70% to full to avoid these mechanics.

You say "terrible" when what you mean is "not as optimal". Resto Shaman can still manage it. And they have greater capacity for handling big damage to single targets and spike damage.

Healing is about a group effort; you want a mix of specs with different strengths.

If people aren't getting low enough to need critical healing regularly, then you're running with too many healers, and that is why your Resto Shaman seems poor. Particularly in MoP, when hybrid DPS typically have strong healing cooldowns available, you should be trying to get by with as few healers as possible. The goal should be to have enough healing to keep everyone from dying during the regular damage, and enough burst healing with hybrid assistance for big damage phases. The goal of healing isn't to keep everyone as close to 100% as you can. It's to prevent anyone from reaching 0%. If nobody reaches 0%, the healers handled the encounter just fine.

Yes, people will get lower with a Shaman healer than they would otherwise, because Shaman don't heal the same way. It's like how people's health levels tend to stay higher with a Disc priest healer, since they have a heavier focus on shields that prevent damage, rather than healing back damage that's been taken. Resto Shaman is something like the opposite of that. It isn't a "problem", since you're trying to argue that average health levels are how you measure healer value, and that is simply not true. There is one factor that determines healer value. Whether or not people die. If Resto Shaman let people dip lower and then yank them back up with Mastery-powered heals, that isn't any "worse" than a Disc Priest shielding the damage in the first place, because the end result is the same; the player didn't die.

This is why triage healers are a valid and useful role, particularly in 25-man. And that's what Resto Shaman are. They may not provide the same blanket healing, but when things go tits-up, they have some of the best tools in the game for handling it.

Your argument may sound good on paper, but it applies itself really terribly to the actual healing model this tier and this expansion, especially in 25H. If you had experience in that environment, you would change your mind.

The developers gave a lot of lip service to this "triage model" going into Cata, but it is a complete farce in reality in 25 man raids. They have greatly incresed the prevalence of absorb mechanics, and the prevalence of mitigation based raid cooldowns with every expansion and with every tier, and healing has essentially become an arms race of getting as many absorbs, as much preventative healing, and rolling as many raid cooldowns as possible to keep raid HP at a stable percentage. The notion of triage and being able to leave people at sub-100% HP for extended periods of time really never happened, and raid damage patterns have been moving more and more away from that with every successive tier since T11. As a result, you have people topped at 90-100% HP for almost the entire duration of most fights, and during the rare times where there is threatening raid wide damage, you have access to a huge array of raid walls, raid mitigation CDs and Tranq like abilities to get through it. Raid wide damage abilities in 25H this tier pretty much demand the raid be topped going into them, you use CDs to get through them, and everyone is then topped or mostly topped again until the next ability. Rinse and repeat.

Your argument that the raid not dipping means there are too many healers in the raid also doesn't have practical application in reality. While you might be able to get away with leaving the raid at sub 65% HP levels (this is the level where it needs to be for a sustained period for Resto Mastery to be a strong throughput stat) and having less healers, there really is no reason to do so unless you are pushing enrage timers. That also reduces your margin for error, increases the chance of people getting gibbed or making mistakes causing them to get gibbed (that may not happen if they were topped), and generally makes the fight more difficult. It's far easier to stack raid CDs and stack absorb mechanics and stay at 6+ healers (this is the amount that are being brought for world first kills on every fight so far this tier) than it is to drop healers, and ask everyone (including the healers) to play flawlessly so you can sit in a triage situation and play to Resto Shaman strengths. There is no reason at all to do that if you have the DPS to meet enrage - you just slow down your progression.

The problem with the Resto design (outside of the obvious additional problems with spread AoE healing and mobile healing) is that it was designed to work with the Cata triage model that was half baked to begin with, and has been nearly totally abandoned by now. As a result, we are saddled with a Mastery that doesn't work with the reality of healing mechanics as they have evolved, and which also causes PvP balance issues preventing necessary PvE buffs. That is the real reason why Shaman are weak; we are built around an outdated healing model that doesn't exist anymore.

That's just a circular argument, not an actual point. The only thing that matters with healing is preventing anyone from dying. Some healers do that by pushing higher HPS in blanket healing. Some don't.

---------- Post added 2013-03-24 at 01:30 PM ----------

You say "terrible" when what you mean is "not as optimal". Resto Shaman can still manage it. And they have greater capacity for handling big damage to single targets and spike damage.

Healing is about a group effort; you want a mix of specs with different strengths.

it doesnt work in real situation like it would on paper. Yet again, you base your opinion on nothing more but theorycraft with very little actual endgame experience, but come here and claim you are right, because those people in 3/12 hc guilds are doing it wrong.

Yeah being resto is quite an upset, most fights you just have to sit there and heal the tank since everyone is gone every which way. Most other healers don't feel this and they are just like "WHY YOU SO LOW ON HEALING SHAMAN SO GUD"

it doesnt work in real situation like it would on paper. Yet again, you base your opinion on nothing more but theorycraft with very little actual endgame experience, but come here and claim you are right, because those people in 3/12 hc guilds are doing it wrong.

Just because people are in 3/12 hc guilds doesnt mean they are doing it right.. Endus has given correct information plenty of times and what hes saying now is completely true. All hes saying is that resto shamans do a much better job at keeping people alive when they absolutely need it rather than keeping everyone at 100% half the fight because of hots and shields. Ofc that doesnt mean that keeping people at 100% is a bad thing but as endus has quite rightly said, we excel at healing when its really needed.
Also if you are in a 3/12 hc guild and you agree with what people are saying here about resto shamans being a complete waste of space then it just sounds like you think you are being carried by the other healer or 2 and thus you probably are doing it wrong. Shamans might be lower at hps because they dont aim at keeping people at 100% the entire fight but they keep people alive better than any other imo.
Ofc as many have said, I would love a buff to our spread healing because having to single target most the fight because people are spread is a bit dull. Just making chain heal base range 25yrds or increasing the radius or healing rain wouldnt have any effect on pvp at all.

Just because people are in 3/12 hc guilds doesnt mean they are doing it right.. Endus has given correct information plenty of times and what hes saying now is completely true. All hes saying is that resto shamans do a much better job at keeping people alive when they absolutely need it rather than keeping everyone at 100% half the fight because of hots and shields.

And THIS EXACTLY is not true, we are not stronger than others when raid is at low HP, meaning this supposed "strength" of us is not really a strenght and this whole theory of us being "triage" healers is just false, when every healer performs just as well in given situation.

You say "terrible" when what you mean is "not as optimal". Resto Shaman can still manage it. And they have greater capacity for handling big damage to single targets and spike damage.

Healing is about a group effort; you want a mix of specs with different strengths.

I say terrible when I mean terrible, as in worse than the other healers. And every class short of resto druids handle "spike damage" better than shamans do. Paladins and disc and monks are much stronger at single target as well.

it doesnt work in real situation like it would on paper. Yet again, you base your opinion on nothing more but theorycraft with very little actual endgame experience, but come here and claim you are right, because those people in 3/12 hc guilds are doing it wrong.

This stuff is mathematics. You don't need to be 12/12 HC to understand how it works. Plenty of the main theorycrafters for various specs are not at the top of the performance charts for their specs. It's the difference between being a coach/strategist, or a linebacker. You might be a really good linebacker. Maybe the best in the industry. You probably know more about football than non-football-players, yes. That doesn't mean you know more than the coach who's calling the plays, even if you're a better linebacker than he is. Because they're completely different skill sets.

If you have a relevant point, you can make it by being reasonable and logical. Trying to dismiss the arguments of others because they're not as high in the progress charts? That's pointless and irrelevant. This isn't an e-peen competition.

What do resto shamans do (slightly) better than any other class? Clump healing under 50% (never mind that their healing lacks the mitigation that paladins or priests do)? What kind of niche is that? What fights is that worthwhile on? Megara (where shamans are still in last place)?

There is a few things here people keep neglecting, so I'm just going to try and bring them back to light. Again, I'm not say resto shaman are fine but just making some points, Perhaps the discussions about GC and his response is even derailing the thread some what. What I saw start as resto shaman don't have to the tools for a spread raid has turned into the best way to measure healer worth.

1) This thread is about 10man raiding. While there is a margin of cross over with 25mans, it isn't the same

2) Healers DO NOT heal in isolation, Any healer, not just resto shaman. While shaman may not be the best at keeping the raid HP above 90%, that druid you are healing whit does it fine, but when that tank is getting burst down to 15% health every 20sec at the same time, that same druid may be having to work a lot harder. Part of healing is know your roll/toolkit and trust your team to do their jobs

3) Using AoE heals on less optimal groups is viable, not efficient, but still sometimes worth doing. Number of times I've drop a HR that heals 1-2 melee + a tank. It's fire and forget healing allowing me to move on to other tasks and provides that same buffer that maybe a druid rolling hots provides. People seem to think that if CH doesn't hit 4 people or HR doesn't hit 6 then don't cast it. I realize that this isn't sustainable long term, but can be a valuable tool when used correctly

4) There are times that the raid doesn't have to spread to all four corners of the room. Sometimes just a bit of encouragement/education from you, they will perhaps only stand 12yrs apart instead of the width of the room. Anything like my group, that's every attempt but you get the picture

What I say is a resto shaman tool box is different, some times we just have to bend the rules of efficiency (As does every healer). Really if you're not happy with the tool box that resto shaman has, then possibly you're playing the wrong class.

No it was a very good answer for such a broad question. So he went the route of answering the whole Hps meter question which is why most of the shamans here are complaining about.

You know that hps matters in most cases and that the only thing shaman offer besides of healing/hps is actually MTT.

That's it. Being the buff bot for the real healer works in 25m, but it's not fun. It surely doen't work in 10m where you have to be able to two-heal fights.

And that's where hps matters. The hell, it makes the fights a lot easier since the more hpds you have, the less mana the other healer has to use.

And never ever talk about spreaded aoe healing. Shamans totally suck at it.

Currently in 10m progression, you need a holy pala, a disc priest and potentially another healer, no matter what. That's the reason why there are about the same number of heal priests in 10m heroic progression as there are reso shamans, druids and monks together. And the main reason to take a resto shaman is because you have no elemental shaman and thus have no use for mail spirit gear (and of course some buffs they provide).

What I say is a resto shaman tool box is different, some times we just have to bend the rules of efficiency (As does every healer). Really if you're not happy with the tool box that resto shaman has, then possibly you're playing the wrong class.

well said, i think a lot of get distracted in trying to become something we aren't. On the other hand a lot of us love our toolkit and just wished that it would better without all the problems we see in the other yard where the grass is greener.

As far as the whole numbers/toolkit/triage thing goes i think people have lost sight of the problem. It isn't about the numbers as it is doing your job effectively. Right now resto shamans are seriously gimped in 10 man and are struggling to do just that. OUR JOB is to be really strong in progression and keep the raid alive when your pushing that first one or two kills. Everyone else goes up linearly to lighten the load and potentially drop extra healers. We are suppose to be the ones who can dig deep and help get the ball rolling. WE AREN'T DOING THAT NOW. in fact looking back at my number from when i was doing H MSV in half blues my numbers have gone down not up, AND THIS IS PROGRESSION!

I think everyone is/should be fine with being down at some times, but when we aren't good at the times we should be is when it's time to call foul play.

P.S
to the whole standard of measuring how we are good or bad.
1. all progression guilds look at numbers and compare you to your own class performances. Your performance may vary greatly depending on comp so the best resto shamans on logs usually have a mismatched comp and make it work anyway.

2. Logs are critiqued not just on overall healing but also burst healing with events occur and CD usuage. So people do look at how you preform when different things occur that may make or break a fight.

3. the best players will always be brought to raid no matter what class they play. How many of said class they bring is another matter

4. If your a linebacker and there a bunch of other linebackers who are better than you, you have to wonder why your coach puts you in the game at all. Furthermore the coach wonders this as well.